Food; The Insider

By Julia Reed

Published: April 29, 2001

Most people remember their first raw oyster. ''I swallowed once,'' wrote M.F.K. Fisher in ''The Gastronomical Me,'' ''and felt light and attractive and daring, to know what I had done.'' Hers was at the Christmas banquet at the Southern California boarding school where she was a sophomore. Mine was at Doe's Eat Place in Greenville, Miss., where I grew up. ''Try it,'' my father said, plopping an enormous Gulf oyster on my plate.

How could I not? I was the only child at the table, and my chief ambition was to somehow be 35. I lifted the oyster out of its shell and swallowed it. First, there was the amazing surprise that the oyster was not in fact gross, but sweet and salty and actually good. (''Oysters, my delicate taste buds were telling me, oysters are simply marvelous!'' Fisher wrote.) Then there was the breathtaking importance of the moment itself: I knew I had forever left the squeamish, fearful realm of childhood and become a risk-taking, experienced adult -- despite the fact that I was only 11.

Just as Fisher was downing her oyster, the senior-class president asked her to dance (an event made no less exciting by the fact that the president was also a girl). After I ate mine, I felt equally chosen, part of the ''real'' world I'd previously seen only in movies or at the edges of my parents' cocktail parties.

The good news is that the bright and sophisticated grown-up world, at least where oysters are concerned, is plenty large. I still eat oysters on the half shell every chance I get, but there are dozens of equally elegant ways to have them. There are angels on horseback (bacon-wrapped oysters broiled until the bacon is crisp), which were the height of cocktail party chic in the 50's and 60's, and which are still delicious, especially if you marinate the oysters first in white wine and garlic and a little black pepper. There are Le Bernardin's sublime warm oysters in truffle cream sauce, a staple of the restaurant since its earliest days in Paris and a perfect combination of earth and sea. And then there are those fabulous names: oysters casino, oysters Foch (pan-fried oysters atop toast smeared with foie gras and covered in port-wine sauce), oysters Bienville (named for the founder of New Orleans and baked in their shells with a cream sauce flavored with minced shrimp and topped with cheese), oysters poulette, oysters Pierre and, of course, oysters Rockefeller.

Oysters Rockefeller was invented at Antoine's Restaurant on St. Louis Street in New Orleans in 1899. The little black-and-gold book Antoine's published to celebrate its centennial in 1940 says that ''Oysters à la Rockefeller . . . were so named because of the extreme richness of the sauce, because at the time the elder Rockefeller was then the richest man in the world.'' The family of Antoine Alciatore, which still owns the restaurant, has never divulged the recipe (on postcards printed to commemorate the millionth order, the recipe is referred to as ''a sacred family secret''), but it is said to include an exotic mix of green herbs and watercress rather than the spinach with which the dish is so often made, and it is always flavored with either Pernod or anisette. I am firmly in the watercress camp, as was James Beard, who provided a recipe for it in his ''New Fish Cookery.'' (Even so, oysters topped with spinach are correctly called oysters Florentine.) Among Beard's ingredients is fennel, which heightens the licorice flavor of the liqueur and is a strangely perfect match for oysters.

My Aunt Jane's favorite oyster dish was oysters Ellis, oysters baked on the half shell with chopped mushrooms and tomatoes and sauce Colbert. Aunt Jane smoked cigarettes out of a holder and wore rubies instead of diamonds, and her best friend killed her husband with a samurai sword. I'm pretty sure she ate oysters Ellis because they are delicious, not because she needed an aphrodisiac, as oysters are reputed to be. While there is something inherently sexy about eating an oyster, there is no scientific evidence that oysters themselves lift the libido. However, oyster loaves were once so successful in making up for the effects of the wandering male libido that they were called ''peacemakers'' in San Francisco and New Orleans, where errant husbands would bring them home to their furious brides in lieu of flowers or candy. (Aunt Jane's friend's husband should have tried this.) An oyster loaf is one of life's great things: a loaf of good French or homemade white bread, halved and hollowed out, brushed with butter, toasted, filled with fried oysters and put back together again. Its particular elegance lies in its purity, but I have to admit that I find it hard not to spread the bread cases with a film of tartar sauce made with homemade mayonnaise. It is better, though, to save the tartar sauce for toasted rounds of a baguette, topped with a fried oyster, another of the great oyster canapes.

These days in New Orleans, the famous oyster loaves have mostly given way to oyster ''po' boys,'' fried oysters on toasted -- but not hollowed-out -- French loaves and dressed with mayonnaise, lettuce and tomato. The best version in town is served at Uglesich's, a bare-bones culinary mecca that also serves the city's best oysters on the half shell, expertly opened by Mike Rodgers, who accompanies them with his own blend of ketchup, olive oil, Worcestershire sauce, hot-pepper sauce and horseradish. It is here that I would take an oyster virgin for that first seminal experience. And if she is very lucky, she will find a pearl. What could possibly make anyone feel more like a sophisticated citizen of the world?